Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Lynn Willis

It was sad news to hear that Lynn Wills at Chaosium recently died. Lynn was Chaosium's editor in chief and instrumental in making Call of Cthulhu the game on 18 January 2013. He will be greatly missed. I found him to be an excellent editor. He was the first editor I worked with, and he was instrumental in making my books Secrets of Kenya, Cthulhu’s Dark Cults and The Spiraling Worm, amongst my other early Chaosium projects, what they became today.

Here are what several key contributors to the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, which Lynn directed for many decades, had to say about him:

“He was incredibly smart, astonishingly widely read, detail oriented, and capable. He is largely responsible for the high quality, playability, and popularity of the leading horror RPG in our field.” – Charlie Krank, President of Chaosium Inc.

“Lynn was always a great guy to work for, an all around good guy, and I'm very sorry to hear of his passing.” – Brian M. Sammons, author of Secrets and editor of Atomic Age Cthulhu, Steampunk Cthulhu and Eldritch Chrome.

“Lynn very graciously bought the first book I ever pitched, right out of college. And by the time he put it out (12 years later), we'd developed a real(ly weird) friendship. I'll truly miss (arguing with) him.” – Cody Goodfellow, author of Secrets of San Francisco.

“He was a gentleman and a scholar; I learned so much from him - indeed, I honestly would not be the writer I am today were it not for Lynn's guiding hand.” – Richard Watts, author of “Love’s Lonely Children”, “Tatterdemallion” and “Behold the Mother”

“Lynn was the editor of the 1991 edition of Horror on the Orient Express (and many other Chaosium books besides), and every page is rich with his love of history and detail. We miss him, and do our best to honour the work he left behind.” – Mark Morrison, author of Terror Australis and Horror on the Orient Express.

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About David

David Conyers is an Australian science fiction author residing in Adelaide. His fiction has appeared in Jupiter, Book of Dark Wisdom, Midnight Echo, Antipodean SF, and Andromeda Spaceways as well as a dozen anthologies published world wide including ‘best of’ collections.
He is the co-author of the novel The Spiraling Worm with John Sunseri and editor of the horror anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults, both published in the United States. David has been a multiple nominee for the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and Ditmar Awards. He won the Australian Horror Writers Association’s Flash Fiction Award in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Aeon Award in the same year.
He recently joined Albedo One, Ireland’s magazine of speculative fiction, as a regular reviewer and is currently editing Cthulhu Unbound 3 with Brian M. Sammons for Permuted Press.